Village life in Rancho Arroyo Seco

Rancho Arroyo Seco, Jalisco, Mexico-- This small community is home to about 300 people, many of them children, many of them related.
It apparently grew from a small group of farmworkers who gathered to work at one of the large ranches or plantations in the area, and grew from there.
Life here is not simple despite the temptation to see it that way.
On the surface, it appears bucolic and straightforward: we awaken every day to the sounds of chickens clucking and geese honking. You still see someone ride a horse nor burro to pick up tortillas from the local tienda. Restaurants are a few tables set out on the side of the street in front of homes, serving mostly tacos. If you need a coke or beer they will walk across the street and buy it for you, but they expect you to go get it yourself.
Homes have electricity and running water, but drinking water is universally purchased from trucks that come here daily.
Stereotypical Mexico, whatever the stereotype, does not exist here.
Everybody works, often including children, and many people make a living with two or three skills or jobs. Our neighbors manage a ranch, have a small store with incidentals for sale, run a restaurant on the street three or four nights a week, and will do anything they can to provide well for their family of five.
There are extended families in the rancho that own large and expensive equipment such as dump trucks, tractors and grading equipment, items that help them make a decent living. The tienda next door has at least $300,000 worth of such equipment parked out back. It's part of the income producing work they do. Another tienda in a home down the street has an enormous big screened television set where the public can view movies certain nights of the week. No admission charge, but they do expect you to buy a beer or coke or snack from the store.
Another neighbor drives a $45,000 pickup truck, and several families use quads to get around town and to the nearby beaches.



Many of the residents are literate. Some are not. Many are bilingual because they have worked for higher wages in the United States. Some are not. The younger generation seems to have an interest in education -- 30 neighborhood kids came to a free English class here recently -- and the 17-year-old across the street is planning to go to college. While he works on completing high school, he can and does work at a variety of jobs, basically anything his family needs him to do.
Some families are land rich and cash poor. One family we know inherited significant land when it was broken up years ago, and is building an RV park on the beach. But they don't have a lot of money, or at least don't display it.
The poor are here too.
Some children do not wear shoes except for special occasions, and one elderly man sleeps on a pallet under a tree. When the rainy season hits he is brought inside by family or friends. He is not quite right.
But most of the children dress well, particularly for school and church and community events. Cleanliness is expected, and enforced, by parents.
Almost every family has animals, including pets. How well they are cared for may depend on economic circumstance and education. No one here buys Alpo, for example, but the ever-present little Chihuahuas are fat happy and healthy. Farm dogs don't fare as well, but get by on scraps and chicken bones.
Only three non-Mexicans live inside the rancho limits, our friends Michael and Sylvia who arrived last year and a California surfer drop-out has been happily near the beach fort ten years more more. By necessity, they all speak Spanish and all live a lifestyle that is a blend of Mexican and Norteamericano. (Gringo, incidentally, is not a bad word. It means "someone not from around here" in local vernacular.)
Family is very important. It is not at all unusual to run into three generations enjoying each other's company. Our neighbors probably are related to 40 or more people here directly or through in-laws.
There are good people and bad people. As a visitor I am not privileged to know which is which, but the local folk know and that makes the community function quite well. Not everyone likes each other, and old disagreements seem to be remembered. But there is no open animosity or yelling and screaming. I have not heard of any violence in a week, and drugs don't seem to be something people think much about. The police show up, if at all, once every few weeks to by a cool drink at a store and move back to the highway.
In this place, only few adults drink alcohol and there are no rowdy bars. Why pay $3 for a beer, as gringos do in town, when you can get one at the tienda for less than a dollar and enjoy a visit with your neighbor on the sidewalk?



This is much more a snapshot of life here than an anthropological study. But this is a very interesting place. Folks have made us feel welcome. And it's not much like life currently in the U.S.A. Perhaps, if the recession gets a lot worse as some folks expect, we can learn from our neighbors how to get along with less.

Viva Mexico

Rancho de Arroyo Seco, Jalisco, Mexico -- We are living this week in a Mexican village, though technically it is called a rancho, with a population of about 300.
So far, everyone we have met has been polite and welcoming, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone that we are among the few gringos who ever come to this place.
The video is a snapshot of early morning at the Arroyo Seco home of Michael Fitzgerald and Sylvia Fox They call it Palapa Flamingo and have created this home in the past year.
We awake every day to the sounds of birds singing, children laughing, and ever a burro braying. The commerce begins early with the sound of the metal doors of the tienda next door being raised, and the vendors arrive to sell their goods along the street. Each has a distinct way to blow the horn of the vehicle so people will know what is for sale. You can buy a bed, or masa, of beer, or meat, or almost anything from the vendors. Most of the people buy the groceries they do not grow from the tiendas. It's easy to eat out when there are four small family restaurants and they only charge about 20 pesos for a nicely done taco. A meal for four last night cost about seven US dollars.
In the tourists towns the prices are higher, but even there food is a great bargain most of the time.
There will be more details later.

Spring in the Mountains - a video

Camp Connell, CA -- Spring is trying to arrive here, but it is a challenge.

In the past week we have seen sunshine, breezes, rain, sleet, snow, and finally more sunshine late today.

The video is a first attempt, so forgive the rough cuts. But it is less than two minutes long and gives you a picture of what this week has been like.

Never before Frog Jump

Camp Connell, CA -- A local expression, transformed into holy writ for gardeners, goes like this:
"Never plant before Frog Jump."
You have to be a resident of Calaveras County, California, in the gold country, or a devoted fan of Mark Twain's colorful prose, to make the link between then - the 1800s -- and now.
Remember the story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," by Twain?
In the current century local boosters of tourism have adopted, or hijacked, the frog story to create a local festival/fair called the Jumping Frog Jubilee, centered at the Calaveras Fair Grounds and the city of Angels Camp. To locals, it is just called "Frog Jump."
It is a REALLY big deal. We even have a Frog Jump Princess, a significant local honor. And we have champion frogs, and brass plates cemented into the sidewalks of the town to commemorate great jumps and jumpers of the past.
But the highlight is the annual frog jump contests. That's plural "Contests" because the folks at the county fair jubilee and the local club that "owned" the frog jump contest had a tiff that resulted in competing jumps.
But people still come for both, enter frogs domestic and foreign, and vie for the jumpiest. Check it out at http://www.frogtown.org/
The big event(s) is(are) planned for the week of May 14, which for most people around the country would be late Spring.
Not for us.
Frog Jump, as we call it here in the mountains, is the date before which you plant your garden at great risk of a late season freeze.
I confess I have not taken this too seriously, so as Spring-like temperatures flowed up the mountainside in the past two weeks I have been dreaming of flowers.
Yesterday, Pat worked in the raised garden beds at our daughter's home, getting ready for planting. The chickens helped by scratching around for bugs in the warm sun.
I took the snow tire chains out of the van and put them away at our house. And just last week, as the ground became almost totally free of snow, I put the snow blower away for the season.
We are currently in Murphys, lower down the mountain, horse-sitting for our daughter and family. It turned cold and rained here at 2,000 feet last night, and then the phone rang early.
A neighbor called to change the weekly poker game location because we have too much snow at home, closer to 5,000 feet. About six inches on the ground and still coming down when he called. About a foot when I checked later on a webcam located near my home.

At least we didn't plant before Frog Jump.
Maybe I should apply the lessons of the local culture to things like snow blowers and tire chains.
I still have to figure out how to get home without chains. Maybe I can borrow the horse.

Newspapers failing: Was it something I did?

Camp Connell, CA -- I fail to see how anyone other than a convicted Luddite can take joy from the failure of newspapers across America.
I certainly don't.
And it appears that more newspapers will certainly close their doors in the next few months.
Democracy (with a small "d") will suffer if more follow the Seattle Post-Intelligencer down the tubes. The voices you hear cheering on the sidelines are generally uninformed about how a democracy works, unkind, or just plain stupid.
I don't think the decline is my fault even though I spent more than four decades working for seven different newspapers and one wire service in four states. Some people think I retired just in time, but they don't understand how much of my life savings was (past tense) invested in newspaper companies.
I know about news available on the Internet. That's how I get most of my news these days, and it is unsatisfactory. Most Internet news sites are variations on the Entertainment Network: 15 seconds of flash about something interesting -- for one moment -- and of no particular significance. Octomom comes to mind.
Even the better web sites established by good newspapers tend to be less than the whole, a mere glimpse into the information that should be there. Very few news web sites offer anything close to what even a small daily normally offered to its readers.
Daily newspapers are struggling to maintain a positive outlook, but it gets harder every day in face of the economy and a public that's not terribly interested.
Everyone associated with the news industry is trying to figure out who to blame, and what to do next.
The Internet has changed society, but it should not be blamed for the decline of newspapers.
Here's my personal list of causes, effects and blame:
-- Greed. Bigger and bigger retail businesses controlled more and more advertising dollars and insisted on more and more control of news content. They went bankrupt when the economy dumped leaving newspaper companies holding an empty bag. I know all about the influence of the Internet, but the reality is that most American newspapers took a major financial bath from the series of bankruptcies that have dotted the retail landscape this past year. Retail advertising was at least 80% of a daily newspaper's income stream. Craigslist dented another 10 per cent.
-- Bad judgment. Newspapers rushed to jump into the Internet news business, which was a good idea, but decided to give away the content they owned, which was the worst idea since the electorate chose George W. Bush. We made our choices, and now we live with the results. No wonder young urbanites who are willing to pay $4 for a latte on the way to work turn up their noses when newspapers went up to a quarter.
-- More greed. Newspaper corporations changed from fiscally conservative to high-flying borrowers and decided that they had to grow bigger and bigger to survive. Banks were happy to loan big bucks (sound familiar?) because everybody knew the economy would boom forever. A critical mistake was made by a lot of normally level-headed people. If it were not for the mountain of debt burying most large news companies, the industry would be making adjustments and waiting for better days. Most daily newspapers still make more money than they spend, which is called "a profit," but can't pay off massive debts they would never have considered taking on a decade ago.
-- More bad judgment. America's culture changed and newspaper executives did not notice, or did not know how to react. The public became more and more fragmented and less and less willing to support the American idea of diversity of voices the Constitution protects. Blame this on a declining education system, or whatever, but the reality is most Americans today are pretty intolerant of opinions they don't agree with, conservative or liberal, and gravitate toward louder more pointed voices they agree with and are not forced to think about. Rush and Rachel are entertaining, but not always helpful. Yes, I am saying we are dumber than we used to be. The Internet is ideal these days because you can always find someone, no matter how nuts, who agrees with your deeply held but really stupid opinions. (Don't take it personally. I count myself among those who read the Internet this way.)
-- And still more greed. For the past 25 years American newspapers, like politics, became more and more "business friendly." Car dealers complained that reviews of automobiles were "anti-business," and threatened to withhold advertising. Real Estate and development interests claimed the newsroom was "anti-growth" and "unfriendly," and publishers all over the country came up with a brilliant idea. Presto Chango, publishers moved Auto and Real Estate Sections to the advertising departments where nary a critical word was ever printed. Readers knew they were being had and quit reading what that saw as pablum and became more suspicious of the rest of the paper. Meanwhile union leaders made unreasonable demands and preached an anti-business litany that backfired, that triggered mindless union-busting by management, and everyone was hurt except the lawyers who were paid by the hour.
There are numerous other contributing factors, but this list is long enough to think about for a while.
Then, maybe, we can come up with some solutions.
------------

Looking back at the headline at the top of this blog I am forced to answer the question: Yes, I am partly to blame but it was mostly things I did not do, rather than what I did.
I did not yell loud enough, resist loud enough, nag enough and refuse to compromise enough. It might not have changed things, but if enough American editors had taken hold of the high ground instead of enjoying their perquisites and worrying about their bonuses, we might all be better off.
I was pretty irritating as an editor, but not nearly irritating enough. Mea culpa.

And now, for a look at the weather

Camp Connell, Ca. -- We needed some snow.
Well, we got it. The photo shows the scene out our living room window at noon today, with the "more snow" weather forecast on TV. They say it may quit tonight for two days, then start again.
In the last eight days or so we have five to six feet of new snow.
It is enough to satisfy me, actually, but the TV folks say we are still behind the snowpack needed to avoid another drought year this summer and fall.
Don't get me wrong, we really like snow to admire and play in. But there are certain issues: Pat had to spend the night down the mountain to make a scheduled 7:30 a.m. meeting at our granddaughter's school; the meeting was canceled because of snowy roads; we missed church Sunday, and two board meetings were canceled due to icy roads; I can't go skiing either because the roads are too bad, or I am too timid to ski in deep powder, or as we call it here, Sierra Cement.

I could not get out the dirt road to the highway this morning even in my truck because of 18 inches of new, very wet, snow.

It was so wet Mr.Miller, the plow fellow, had to use a giant front-end loader to clear the road enough for his snow blowers to get to our driveway.
The top photo shows him clearing the road at the top of my driveway, and the bottom photo shows the blower clearing the drive by our doorway. My semi-buried truck is barely visible.




They did get it cleared enough for us to get in and out.
For now I am using this blogging break as an excuse not to go outside and shovel the garage entrance clear of the snow now piled up against it.

No problem.

Tonight, I will just throw a burger on the barbie and kick back and, probably, watch the snow. That's the barbie in the picture. It took about an hour to get the deck cleaned off, less than normal thanks to son Zack repairing the deck blower.




I think I'll have some fun and stay in and work on my taxes.

Living in a post card

Our local web site posted a short video today of the road conditions in our neighborhood, after about a foot of new snow.

The webmaster referred to the scenery here as "living in a post card."
You can see what he means by following the link and clicking on the YouTube video.

The entire video is over seven minutes, maybe too much for most of you. If it is, advance to the last minute. Those who know this part of the country, or who have visited our home, will recognize the last minute of the video as showing the ride from Dorrington, home of the Lube Room saloon/ bar and grill, a quarter mile to the Camp Connell General Store (and our post office), and the turnoff to our side road.

www.bigtreestech.com/home/

Or the direct YouTube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnugUK2JZNo

If you check the links too late, you'll have a chance to see how a local non-profit web site provides news and information and community links to the 104 full time, and hundreds more weekend and vacation folk who call this area home.

Enjoy.

(Technical stuff) The picture below is of granddaughter Delaney during a snowball fight with Pat a week or so ago. The drive photos are of the new snow that fell this week.